


At the Stroke of Twelve

by englishable



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 06:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6970663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cinder-covered young man sent from childhood to do the grunt-work of his family, a wickedly professional stepmother and her two quarrelsome sons, a charming and remarkably effective prince, a somewhat unmatronly young fairy godmother determined to do her best: Finn isn't entirely aware of the narrative he's stuck in, nor what he should expect from all its principal players, but fortunately he is good enough and clever enough - protagonist material, you see - to manage things anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Stroke of Twelve

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been in a whimsical, fairy tale sort of mood lately, so I was perfectly primed for the moment when I came across this prompt over on the TFA meme: 
> 
> _Prince Poe, son of Queen Leia Organa, is having a ball to find a husband, and all the eligible men in the land are invited! Finn dearly wants to attend, but his wicked stepmother Phasma locks him in the attic while she takes her two sons, Hux and Kylo._
> 
> _Luckily, Finn's Jedi-godmother Rey (still in training, her first assignment!) arrives to dress him up and help him get to the ball on time._
> 
> This is one of the sillier, fluffier things I’ve written in a while, something I always say so I can top it later, and I had a ridiculous amount of fun. Thank you again to the OP for this prompt. I enjoyed it immensely!

…

If you have ever been in a fairy tale before – which you very may well have, without realizing it – you will most likely know that second wives and elder children are always given shortest shrift. Statistically speaking, you should avoid becoming either one if possible. Causes of death frequently range from penetrating trauma or decapitation to being transformed into stone or forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until you expire from the distributive shock.

And Phasma preferred to put herself at an advantage by knowing the facts, so as soon as she saw that her new financially comfortable widower husband had a young son in addition to her own pair – and three, three is a number you must be wary of – she poisoned that bastard straight-off like the immaculate professional she was.

(Poisoned the husband, I mean, not the son. There was no inquiry on the local magistrate’s part, since nobody in that village had particularly liked Master Snoke anyhow, and they could all cheerfully cite some distant great-aunt or second cousin who had died of arsenic in the evening tea.

Common occurrence, you know.)

“Listen closely, now,” Phasma told her two sons, sitting them down together on a damask armchair. “Whatever your instincts might tell you in the future, we must always stay as allies to one another. We cannot expect the rest of the world to show us any kindness.”

The older son curled a lip, and then glared at the smaller boy beside him who was making a battered wooden soldier move on its own. I suppose we must refer to them henceforth as our ugly stepbrothers, although the elder boy had a head of hair like shining-polished copper and the younger one had a long, august nose that lent his profile a vaguely marble aspect.

(Phasma was not ugly either, and her cruelty usually had a liberal touch of hard-headed pragmatism to it, but a story is a story is a story.)

 “That’s all very well,” the red-haired boy sneered, clutching his fat tabby kitten, “but if Benjamin ever believes he can stab me in the back, I shall have him taken to the gallows for witchcraft. And we are only half-brothers, aren’t we?”

“Huxely is a stupid gnashgab, is what he is,” the long-nosed boy pouted. “That should be the crime, not what I can do – and I am not a witch, I am a wizard. You may call me Kylo Ren the Magnificent.”

"I will call you that the day the sun burns out," Hux snarled, and jabbed an elbow into his brother's side. "More like Kylo Ren the Moldwarp." 

We'll leave them there, for now.

And as for that youngest son, whose name was Phineas, although this is presumably not the name you know him best by:

He was kind – yes, yes, I know – and good – don’t roll your eyes at me, pigsnie, or you may leave and get your fairy tale elsewhere – and caring, as privately dignified and uprightly handsome as a young pine tree. He would have made for rather cloying company had he not been so genuine about everything, and so naturally Phasma detested him.

When Phineas grew old enough she put him to work in the smithy his father had owned, which was attached to the house, and there he shoveled ash and stoked the forge fires and hammered molten metal until his hands grew as burn-scarred and rough as hide gloves. Everybody liked him, because he would always have time to straighten a bent sickle or a plow-blade if you asked, or else fashion a new one at half-price if you had the time to spare. On occasion he would hold your haycart up with his shoulders while you improvised an axle.

(And for a personal touch he branded everything with the same mark, so that he would be accountable for any poor craftsmanship if it came to that: FN2187, stamped discreetly onto the side.)

So Phineas did not question it, not at all, when a man rode into his dooryard one midsummer’s day astride a warhorse whose brindle coat was streaked with orange. A medallion on its collar showed the royal seal, a starbird rising against a field of white.

The man himself, predictably, was quite handsome, blackbird-haired and strong-jawed and with skin that shone golden like sunlight through autumn oak leaves. He was excessively distracting – charming, we might say – to do political business with, which was why his mother often sent him on diplomatic missions. Queen Leia Organa was not above subterfuge, even if the acting party couldn’t help himself.

“Good day to you, sir,” Prince Poe said. “Can you replace a horseshoe for me?”

“That isn’t for me to decide, your majesty.” Phineas set his hammer down atop its anvil, approaching with one hand buried in his smith-apron pocket. “First we ought to ask your friend here what he makes of me. What is his name?”

The horse flapped its lips as Phineas drew out an apple. The prince watched this transaction with a sort of tilted, careful expression.

“His name is Barbatio,” Poe said after a moment, “the Eighth. And I don’t believe you need worry about favorable first impressions. He seems to like you well enough.”

Phineas noted that the bridle’s martingale had been cut, or else removed, and so the horse could toss its head however it liked in appreciation. There were no sharp spurs on the bit, either, no spikes beneath the noseband, and the white mane was combed and clean despite all the hay-chaff and dust that clung to its rider’s own hair.

“You can tell him that I’m honored,” Phineas said.

(In the attic of the house, Hux turned from his volume of Plutarch and looked down from a high attic window. In the kitchen, in the midst of chopping devil’s-plant and elf-leaf and frog’s-foot –sweet basil and rosemary and buttercups, I should say – for yet another spell that would doubtless blow up in his face, Kylo Ren the Moldwarp peered out as well.)

Poe dismounted with a jangling of boots and buckles while Phineas lifted the horse’s right front hoof. As he pounded the square shoe-nails into place, each one with a few assured taps, he talked. Phineas always liked talking to his customers when he worked, regardless of their pedigree.

“What’s the capitol city like?” Phineas asked. “Hosnia? I’ve never seen it for myself.”

“It’s about as good or bad as any other city you’re likely to know.”  Poe glanced about the yard, at sweetbrier vines climbing up the stone wall and a tidily-split cord of firewood. That flowering ash tree by the door looked as though it was frequently pruned. “Lots of pigeons and people, although sometimes you can’t half-tell the difference.”

“I wouldn’t know much about that, either,” Phineas said. He liked maps, liked charting out different quests with a stub of charcoal before rubbing them away, but this was not the same. “I’ve never left the village.”

“Oh.” Poe said, and briefly put a hand over his mouth to think. “Well, Ahch-To, that’s the port city – you can sit up on the cliffs and watch storms come in off the sea. Jakku’s across the mountains, further west, you can see for miles because it’s all sand and scrub-brush. I just came from there.”

Phineas glanced up. He didn’t like to prod, as much as he enjoyed the conversation, but such negotiations often meant an approaching war. What with he and his step-brothers – Phineas didn’t mind them, really, quarrelsome and strange though they were – being of prime conscription age, it seemed a somewhat personal matter.

“No signs of trouble, I hope?”

Poe laughed. The sound startled sparrows and bluebirds on the roof, who always seemed to congregate around Phineas until Millicent – that was the cat, the plump tabby – chased them off.

“No, no.” Poe scratched his neck to discover it was flushed.  “Ah. Perhaps. Marriage talk, is all. My mother says it’s past time I thought of it.”

 “I see.” Phineas nodded, because it seemed like the next thing to do. He did not know much about arranged marriages, although he always thought it would be more trouble for the woman than the man, but the prince sounded very unhappy about it indeed. “I wish you the best of luck, then.”

The horse set down its new-shod hoof, trotting and dancing about. They both watched him in silence.

“Thank you,” the prince said, next, wiping imaginary soot from his coat. “You’re very kind.”

“It’s not entirely selfless of me to say so. A royal marriage means we all get a holiday here, you know.” Then Phineas blinked. “Unless you meant about the shoe.”

“Either one, I believe.” Then Poe laughed again, setting the perplexed birds all a-twitter once more, and swung himself onto the saddle. He pulled the reins to leave, but turned back around at the gate as he did. “What is your name, my friend?”

“Phineas,” the smith answered, smiling now himself.

“May I call you Finn?”

“Oh. Uh – ” it was a rare moment of fluster for him. “Yes, yes. Of course you may, your majesty.”

Poe waved.

And clearly Finn did not expect to see the prince ever again, because after all he was only a smith in a small village, but he did not think this the appropriate thing to tell somebody who had declared himself his very first proper friend.

So instead he raised an arm in return, as he watched the prince ride away, and from within the house three additional pairs of eyes watched with varying interest as well.

…

The invitation was written on white laid-linen paper, in crimson ink that glinted as Phasma waved it overhead. A sparkle rode in her eyes, which all three men gathered about the breakfast table knew meant impending murder or tax evasion or some combination thereof.

“This just came from Queen Leia.” Phasma curtsied into her seat. “There’s to be a masquerade ball at the palace. All the young men of the kingdom have been asked to attend – the prince will select his future consort from among them.”

The table was set with brown bread, hard cheese, windfall-apple cider and a honey pot charmed to walk on its stout legs. It was a poorly-cast charm, though, so the walk was more of a drunken waddle. Hux shooed the inebriated thing away when it attempted to serve him.

“Interesting,” he remarked, in a tone that told everyone he was not interested in the least.

“I don’t see how the Illenium Council would allow it.” Kylo Ren the Mediocre beckoned, and the honey pot came to squat in his palm like a little toad. “A prince is expected to marry outside the realm for purposes of alliance. The queen already did us a disservice by wedding that mercenary scoundrel.”

“The prince is going to be king someday, isn’t he? A king’s actions are synonymous with law.” Phasma threw the invitation down with the muster of somebody tossing a duelist’s glove. “I expect both of you to make the most of this opportunity.”

In the pause that ensued, she ran an evaluative eye over the two half-wits biology and archetypal convention had seen fit to yoke her with.

There might have been some melancholy, patrician appeal to Benjamin’s face, she supposed, though that had gone out of the fashion a millennium ago. And she knew several stories featuring long-shanked, incompetent wizards who found their place in the world, but none of those stories included any personal details about ever-threatening tears or savage-quick tempers or a mind that was somehow both unrelentingly constant and as full of twinges and twitches as an old scar. No, no, no.  

Hux, meanwhile, was the oldest, never an auspicious sign in any folktale, but he possessed that blazing hair and an authentic Dead Father Figure – Phasma had also seen to this with her own hands, or rather with her hands and a well-swung spittoon – which lent his heritage an essential air of mystery.

But Hux also looked at people as though he’d recently scraped them off his boot heel with a stick, so. Perhaps the prince’s tastes ran towards the classical.

“Both?” Finn asked, and we must call him Finn here because he had recently stopped answering to Phineas. “You mean all three of us.”

“Do I?” Phasma cocked an eyebrow. “Explain, if you please.”

“It says all the men in the kingdom.” Finn held up the invitation, his fingernails white where they clenched the rippling paper. His mouth was set, but his eyes looked out on everything as though in surprise at himself. “Not just the lords’ sons, or the counts’ sons. They summoned everybody.”

(Ah, Phasma sometimes thought, but Finn.

Imagine how high she could’ve raised a blood-born son as clever and clear-eyed and strong-hearted as Finn. Finn was golden ore beaten down to serve as a paving stone, while the other two were tin polished to ape a service of silver, and Phasma knew this better than anyone – except you, true believer, who may in fact know more.)

“Yes, my dear mite, and on those terms you would rank as a nobody.” She swirled a handful of spice into her cider. “Besides, what interest could you possibly have in such an affair?”

Hux and Kylo Ren the Cookware Charmer flashed smiles at one another.

Finn set the paper down and was quiet.

For the next two days, though, the house became a maelstrom of activity. Wool-twill waistcoats and justaucorps and breeches were inspected, boiled in a vat of iron oxide to turn the fabric a lusterless black like crow feathers. Arguments were pitched over the shaving mirror, which came to a decisive non-conclusion when Phasma snatched her sons by the hair and bashed their heads together.

She also went about nailing bars of cold iron above the doorways, across the shutters, humming as she did.

“For fairies,” she explained, sensibly, when Kylo Ren the Dubiously Credentialed inquired her about it. “I’ve been informed it keeps them clear of a dwelling.”

“By whom? Why would we concern ourselves with fairies?”

“The Kanjiklub sisters recommended it,” Phasma replied.

"What, those gossips? They'll believe anything. The wainwright once told them that - "

“- And if you need to ask me at all, you are clearly unprepared for the answer.”

The masks came last, as expected, because they required the most attention. Kylo Ren the Admittedly Creative fashioned himself something flat-planed and made of blackened steel, damascened with silver. Hux produced one made of dark-red fired clay, the white blaze on its forehead like an erupting star.

Finn had no formal dress, or at least nothing that had fit him in a decade, so he went on mucking out the privy and hammering at his forge and thinking – well, the prince certainly wouldn’t choose either of them, not the prince Finn had met, but he still ought to choose someone who could make him happy.

What a terrible thing it would be, to have a laugh like that and never get to use it.

He was still telling himself this as he watched his stepmother and brothers ride away in the hired carriage, gliding down the dry summer road on its slender wheels. He told himself this as he trudged into the house, as he lifted a pot of lentil stew off the fire and served a bowl. Evening darkness fell in the room, but he did not bother to light a candle or stoke up the hearth’s glowing coals.

What more was there to see?

No, Finn was content enough to stay where he was and listen. There were the swallows coming to roost in the eaves, there were the mice inside the daub-patched walls, there were the planed floorboards creaking underfoot, and there was –

A tapping, it sounded like.

Or a knocking, somebody rapping their knuckles along the wall in search of a weak spot. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, with quick pauses, and then the noise stopped.

 Finn stood.

Which was fortunate, because this was precisely when the room exploded, and if he’d been sitting down then a catapulting brick might have nailed him upside the head and ended our story in a mundanely realistic but unsatisfactory note.

And all right, it didn’t quite explode, but the wall did cave in with a monumental sneeze of dust and mortar and wattle-twigs that sent Finn backwards over the stool he had been seated on. He let out a curse and tried to stop the vibration in his eardrums.

When his vision cleared again, there was a veiled young woman in white standing amidst the remnants of their kitchen. She had a staff of rowan wood in one hand, its end glowing foxfire green, and she clutched an unrolled parchment in the other.

“Greetings, Distressed Young Person,” she read, from the parchment. You could hear the capitalization in her tone. “I Am Your Jedi Godmother, Rey. Are You in Need of Any – dammit, I don’t know how Master Luke expects me to talk through this thing. I suppose the mystique is already gone, wouldn’t you say?”

She tore away the muffling scarf over her mouth. Her features beneath it were pale and speckled-brown across the cheeks, like a warbler’s egg.

“—Are you in need of any magical assistance today?” she finished, then twitched her nose with rabbity indignation. “By the way, what idiotic saddle-goose put cold iron around all your doorways? I had to make my own opening just so I could get in here.”

“I noticed.” Finn lurched to his feet, deliberating whether he should pick up the stool or turn himself over to a lunatic asylum. “If you’re a burglar, you ought to consider a change of career.”

“What? No, no. Take the wax out of your ears, Phineas. Finn. Didn’t you hear me?” She spread her arms wide. Her staff’s end still shone. “I’m your – well, let’s call it your fairy godmother. That might be easier.”

Finn wiped at his face.

And if he had not come of age amongst waddling honey pots and stew that carried a taste of enchantment, because his stepbrother never scrubbed the cauldrons well enough, he might have taken issue with this statement.

As things were, he had more pressing concerns.

“You can fix that wall, can’t you?”

“Yes, don’t worry about it.” Rey dusted her shoulders. “I’m here to get you to the ball. The prince’s ball? That’s – that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Oh, toads and vipers, I thought that was why you called me – I’m sorry, I’m new at this, I should – ”

Finn was preparing to say he hadn’t called her, he had no idea who she was or why she should grant a silly wish like that when there were so many more practical things to ask for, but Rey was holding herself with such unsure stiffness that he sighed.

(The prince’s laugh, he considered again. At least he could go and be sure things were all right.)

“Since you’re already here,” Finn said, “you might as well try.”

Rey cast off her hesitation like the act it had no doubt been – magic and storytelling alike are really just a matter of lying with the right details, you see – and swung her staff in a circle.

I would pass, usually, over the following sartorial matters, but although Rey was a beginner in most things she had a great deal of raw talent she knew precisely how to use.

(Magic also hates begging or demanding where it would prefer persuasion, but this takes a certain haggler’s mindset and an eye for hidden value. Rey was exceptionally good at this, which was part of how she came to be the patron of Those Who Have Been Left Behind.

But Finn didn’t know this part, and properly speaking neither should you.)

And Rey dressed him in a silk brocade so white that it was dazzling, a long regimental jacket and a matching waistcoat beneath it, abalone buttons and a curving silver sabre hung from the black satin sash at his waist. The tall riding boots she put him in were gleaming black, as well, and Finn realized somewhat dizzily that she had clothed him as a soldier.

Then she put a white mask on his face, made of what felt impossibly like glass, though it had a scrollwork pattern of crimson red that traveled from his forehead to below his right eye.

“Red and white, you see? Your prince’s family colors.” Rey nodded, arms akimbo, as though she’d just kneaded bread or tossed a hay bale instead of bending the fabric of space. “Now, as for transport –”

There came a rustling noise like feathers as a large cloak unfurled around Finn’s shoulders, and upon second glance he saw this was exactly what it was – a thousand feathers, all sewn cleverly together, from what appeared to be the wings of white gyrfalcons.

“Think of where you want to go, then spin that thing around yourself once.” She puckered her lips, considering. “Oh, and you need to get back here before midnight. Almost forgot that part. Spells never overstay their own curiosity, not by a minute.”

Finn smoothed a hand down the cloak, the feather-vanes bowing under his fingers, and glanced up still in a daze.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Rey said, then she reached forward to give him a hard turn that made the room blur, “that’s not how magic works.”

…

In every obligatory small-talk conversation, there comes a critical moment wherein the frontal lobe and cerebral cortex – in an understandable effort to save themselves from rapid mortification – both disengage at once like the pole-pin of a wagon springing loose. Responsibility for any subsequent discourse then falls to the reptilian basal ganglia, which in our species has not been on the social up-and-up for around two million years.

“Oh, yes,” Poe responded, to a question he could not remember two seconds after the fact, “I believe our three-decker dragoons are trained to perform the caracole maneuver.”

The guest he was trapped in discussion with – an orange-haired, rigid-backed man wearing black, beside a looming black-haired man who had seethed silently all the while – did not seem much bothered by his amphibious mixing of military tactics.

(Hux had been superbly apathetic about this whole venture until approximately an hour ago, when he first clapped eyes on the palace’s limestone-white walls and its barbican gates and the soaring, spired towers from which one could take in the whole countryside at a glance. The lush red-currant wine they served here certainly didn’t hurt.

Phasma was circling the crowd, laughing affectedly behind a peacock-feather fan.)

Poe looked about once more, surveyed the milling faces and swirling colors of the ballroom to be sure he hadn’t missed anyone. His mother sat on the dais, in a posture of exquisite repose as always, a silver-brown braid coiled about her head in a fashion that required no accompanying crown.

She perked her eyebrows at him.

Their shaggy old boarhound – Bacca, which was short for something nobody could pronounce – sat beside her, at stolid attention like an infantry guard. He was pondering who amongst this assembled company he most wanted to bite in the arse-end next.

Poe turned away again. The golden half-mask displayed his mouth as it pursed in irritation.

“But the army really ought to have its own branch of architects and engineers, I believe,” Hux bored on, with the single-mindedness of somebody turning an auger. “Siegecraft is no longer the fashion in warfare, but according to Aristobulus of Cassandreia –”

We will never discover what wisdom Aristobulus of Cassandreia might have imparted across the span of so many centuries, although he certainly had many valuable and worthwhile things to say, because this was when the man in white walked in.

He had arrived late, pausing to hang up his thousand-falcon cloak despite a baffled footmen’s offer, but if the massive doors opening to admit this one last guest had not drawn everyone’s attention they would have no doubt all stared anyway. He carried a sort of faint, peculiar iridescence about his person, like the moonlit edge of a cloud, which did not seem wholly attributable to either the ballroom’s crystal chandelier or the late-stage effects of intoxication. An officer’s sabre clanked at his side. The crimson marking on his mask traveled the whole length of that hall to where the prince stood in a single instant, its impact as stunning as a fired musket-shot.

Then the man took a humble step forward into the room, as someone would while approaching a skittish horse to offer it an apple, and Poe knew precisely who the stranger really was.

(He wasn’t an imbecile, after all, and here before him was the tacit purpose for which he had arranged this whole event in the first place. On the behalf of his future subjects, we should be glad for his perspicacity. Princes in fairy tales lack it so very often.)

Poe shouldered his way through the crowd without another word to the two men in black, chewing the inside of his cheek. All right, then, it appeared Finn had come wearing a mask to cover his whole face, which indicated that he did not want to be recognized.

Or, not yet – perhaps that meant Poe was being invited to play along with a charade, towards some climactic reveal.

That suited him just fine.

“A well-planned entrance, sir,” Poe said. “I hear tardiness is –”

Finn stared at the prince, standing there in brushed golden and brown velvet – it was a bit hard to see through this mask, though, so it could've been satin – and said the first thing that came into his head.

“—Can you dance the twin-imperial écarté?” Finn asked. “I apologize, your majesty, but that’s only style I know.”

Poe stopped.

His station in life had left him unaccustomed to being caught off-guard, or interrupted for any reason, but now this odd-named blacksmith with the apple had done it twice is as many encounters. A giddiness tripped down his spine.

“I can dance anything,” he offered, in reply, “but since you happen to be the present expert, I’ll invite you to take the lead.”

“All right.” They stepped closer to one another, arranged their arms. “Uh. Shall we?”

“Of course.”

Finn had only ever practiced this around the smithy, on rainy days when there were no customers, or up in the barn’s swept loft where nobody could hear him. Dancing it on a marble floor to a hundred-piece orchestra was something else entirely, and he made a mistake every fifth step or so. His fairy whatever-she-was had given him riding gloves, fortunately, which disguised both his calluses and the present clamminess of his palms, but even so the prince’s back felt woodstove-warm against his hand.

Poe made no comment about the frequent blunders, not even when his toes got trodden on, although he himself moved in perfect spring-heeled time to every note. Quite the contrary, he needed to bite his lip once or twice to keep from smiling.

Finn decided this was very gracious of him.

And ah, he considered, level-headedly, the prince did not seem to have recognized him, although with the mask it could hardly be considered Poe's fault. It had been ridiculous and conceited of Finn to expect anything different, hadn’t it?

Oh well.

The tenth and eleventh hours chimed by.

At the ballroom’s far end, Ben – we will call him that, for now, since he was hiding behind a proper mask and did not need the false title – squinted at the dancing pair with semi-professional admiration and envy. There was a charmed air around the stranger that seemed to waver while he moved, distorting the colors seen through it like sheets of rain on glass. It was the handiwork of a talented beginner in which Ben's evaluation could find no flaws or chinks.

Not a trick he himself could ever hope to manage, in other words. Every time he tried to look any harder, to see what lay beneath the illusion, a darting pain struck him in the forehead.

“That’s fey magic,” he declared. “Someone’s cast a glamour.”   

“Be silent, you stampeding ignoramus,” Hux said, standing beside him. His eyes were closed. “I am composing my coronation speech.”

(And through the ballroom’s high-arched eastern window, one could see a rising quarter-moon and the capitol city’s great clock tower. Its chimes could be heard for miles, each toll striding out over pastures and fields like the footfalls of a giant.)

“Have you enjoyed the evening?” Finn asked, after another song wound to its finish. “I’m sure everyone is wondering if you’ve made your – selection doesn’t seem to be the right word. Your choice. Have you?”

“With my mother wondering more than the rest put together, I’m sure.” They had stopped dancing, but Poe did not release his partner’s hand or arm. “But I’m nearing a decision. The council won’t like it, though – they’ve said they would prefer someone from Jakku or D’Qar, to maintain our trade agreements. What would you tell them, if you were in my place?”

“There’s not much risk of that happening, your majesty. So I shouldn’t pretend I could speak for you.” Finn tilted his head. Light caught the red of his mask. “Nobody should, though. A king’s duty is to do the right thing, whatever his advisers try and tell him. Does that sound reasonable?”

“Quite. And you misprize yourself, sir.” Poe tipped his chin up, slightly, indicating the gilded-iron circlet that he wore balanced on his head. “I think this crown would suit you well.”

“That one there?” Finn gave it a craftsman’s critical glance. “I’d have to make several changes first, your majesty, if you’ll excuse my saying so. The sunstones are set crooked.”

Poe laughed – which, if you will remember, was the very thing Finn had come to hear – and began leading him towards the dais where Queen Leia sat.

But then the midnight hour began its strikes, a first and a second and a third toll, and Finn felt both his knees lock up.

What had he been wearing, before the enchantment? He tried to remember. Rough trousers, a jacket worn out at the elbows, a linen shirt that had been the victim of countless mendings, a neck-scarf he used to either clean the sweat off his face as he stood before the burning forge or to wipe his nose when it ran on the chilled-damp mornings.

A nobody, Phasma had reminded him. A nobody.

Well, frankly speaking, it was true.

There was a fourth, fifth, sixth toll. The prince turned back towards him, wearing a perplexed frown, and gave another slight tug on Finn’s arm. One of the abalone buttons on his enchanted white jacket suddenly winked out of existence like a firefly.

He slid his hands free, dropping a harried bow.

“Thank you for the dance, your majesty,” he said. “And for the conversation. We’ll all be very fortunate to call you our king.”

And, in sight of everyone, to the tune of seven-eight-nine, Finn straightened up and ran.

He knocked several guests down in the process, too, hollering back his apologies as the sword and the sash alike vanished from his waist. Poe dashed after him, although not fast enough – a more plausible scenario for two men in flat-heeled shoes, you would imagine, than if one of them had been in, say, slippers made from blown glass.

“Poor young fellow, whoever he is.” Phasma had rejoined her sons and was sipping the sweet red wine. “Always a pesky expiration on those sorts of short-term seelie charms – if you require a comparison, dealings with the devil will give you a seven-year lease at the very minimum.”

“The joke would be on old Lucifer himself, then, Mother,” Hux said, jauntily. “When the time came he would discover that you have no soul to collect.”

“Quite true.”

Finn’s coat was turning its old woad-dyed blue again when he snatched his falcon-feather cloak from the hands of a waiting attendant. He swung it around his shoulders as the tenth, eleventh notes struck, as he careened through the palace doors, but just before the night air snatched him up he half-thought he heard someone calling his name.

The clock struck twelve. The red and white mask fell from his face to land on the front steps, a hairline crack appearing across its front.

“Phineas – Finn, Finn, wait – ”

Then his feet struck creaking wooden floorboards. Something knocked against his shin. Finn was pitched headlong over a footstool, landed hard on his knees, and found himself staring at the faultlessly-repaired stone wall of his own kitchen at home, far from anything resembling orchestra music or crystal chandeliers or brushed golden velvet.

He picked himself up.

And so Finn also noticed that the hearth-fire’s cooling embers had at last burned out, that a single bowl of untouched lentil stew still sat waiting for him on the table.

…

And here, as you may already know, is where the grand search ought to begin: a proclamation trumpeted throughout the countryside that whosever fits this dainty glass slipper – or this mask, in our case – shall take the crown prince for a husband.

Really, though, what sort of political sense does that make? A risky gamble, if you ask my opinion. Surely there was more than one woman in that far-away land who wore a size six and a half, and surely there was more than one gentleman in Hosnia who could have made that mask sit well enough on his face if he tried.

But our prince was a man who knew his own heart, and who had recently been advised to know his own mind as well, so when he rode out at daybreak with a mask tied to his belt there was only one house he had any intention of visiting.

Phasma, the nape of whose neck had been prickled with vague anticipation all morning, was standing at the front gate when she saw a dust-cloud advancing up the road. A suspicious quantity of robins and goldfinches had been landing atop the roof for several hours, accompanied by the odd mouse or squirrel. They all appeared to be waiting for whatever would happen next, though Phasma was satisfied to note that none of them were wearing clothes. She had, at least, been spared that final revolting indignity.

She kilted up her skirts and strode inside.

Hux sat spreading marmalade on his bread in forceful, irate slaps. Kylo Ren the Human Disaster was picking owl pellets apart and boiling the delicate bones clean in a pot, lizard skulls and rat ribs and the furcula of a sparrow, which could only grant wishes if it was first snapped in two.

(That’s another general rule, in fairy tales and life alike. All the strongest magic comes from things that have been broken – don’t argue with me there, poppet. I know my business well enough.)

“Where,” she pronounced, “is Phineas?”

“Skulking in the attic,” Hux said. “He’s been in a foul temper all day. Why?”

This was a clear case of seeing the sawdust before the plank, as Hux had been quite the skulker himself. The prince had not returned to speak with him last night, after the dazzling stranger beat his hasty departure, had not even offered anyone a second dance at all. Why, he hadn’t even thought to compliment Hux on his recommendation about rifling the insides of cannon barrels for improved accuracy. How rude.

Phasma hauled Hux to his feet.

“Go lock him in, then.” She gave a shove. “The prince will be here shortly. We may be able to manage this, if we can keep our wits about us. And comb down that cowlick, will you? Try to look presentable. As for you –”

Her second son turned to face her. The shoulder-blade of a nightingale protruded from his mouth, because he had once read that placing it under your tongue could turn you invisible.

“—I oughn’t bother asking you for a spell to help things along, I suppose. Something to shift the memory, move the heart? Turn the hourglass of time? Your brother is sorely lacking in personal charm, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Magic such as that comes very highly-priced,” he answered, flatly, and spat the bone onto his palm. “I would need to tear out an eye, at the minimum. Or cut off an arm.”

Then Ben looked up at her.  He had once been taught a lesson on where his allegiances always ought to be.

“Would you like me to try?”

(Here we may recall those ugly stepsisters from the old story, who had looked down at the sturdy-strong feet upon which they had walked and run and danced all their lives – feet which would never have fit such a dainty glass slipper, in other words – before reaching out to take the cleaver from their mother’s proffering hand.

Turn that over a while in your mind, if you please, and tell me for whom they really did it.)

Phasma gritted her teeth. Such needless dramatics. 

“Absolutely not.” She pushed him towards the stairs, after Hux. “A parlor trick of that ilk is as liable to burn the house down or turn us all into swans as it is to go even half-way right – the grander feat on your part will be keeping silent.”

He went scudding away, and Phasma swung herself towards the door.

In the attic, meanwhile, Finn lay on his back and stared up at the bare rafters. A dull, flattening heaviness had been settled in his chest all day, and carrying it about had finally grown too wearisome. If they wanted him to do anything, Finn had decided, at the forge or in the house or around the yard, they would have to ask him directly.

He let out a long breath, a sail going slack.

Perhaps, if he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could summon up a memory of last night so lucid and clear it would feel like the real thing all over again. He could affix the sounds and colors and textures to some secure place deep within his mind, where they could be found whenever he wanted to think about –

Then Finn heard two sounds, together: the ringing of a bridle, down in the yard, and the brisk sliding-shut of an iron bolt-lock on the trapdoor directly beneath him.

“Enjoy yourself,” came Hux’s droll voice, through the wood. “You may be there for quite some time.”

Finn ran to the attic’s dusty window.

A brindle-coated charger stood tied to their hitching post, and the prince was walking determinedly towards the door, one fist already raised as if to knock. Even from this distance, Finn could see a painted mask swinging from his belt.

His hands, which were sore at the fingertips due to how hard his pulse was beating, startled back from the sill.

A nobody, he almost thought again, he was still a nobody, a nobody who shoveled ash and cinder and certainly had no business whatsoever with a prince, but then Phineas – who was also Finn now, we should remember, names are important – halted himself, because he happened to know his own heart and mind as well.

And for the first time in a very long while, possibly in his whole life if we are as being honest as a fairy tale requires, Finn felt the possessing, straight-sighted joy of both wanting something for his own sake and knowing it was within his reach. The prince had come looking for that supposed nobody, after all.

Yes, Finn thought. Yes, all right.

He turned again towards the trapdoor.

He’d made that lock himself, hadn’t he, and the hinges with it? Yes, again, certainly, there was his brand there in its iron, FN2187. He had melted the ore and poured it and shaped it and watched it steam in the water as it cooled, and damned if he was going to let a thing like that get in his way now.

Finn went to the desk where Hux sometimes sat reading and picked up a slender pen-knife.

Downstairs, there came an insistent pounding at the door. Phasma opened it and did not bother feigning surprise when Poe stepped through, clothed in the battle-standard colors of red and white.

“Good day,” he said, taking in the sight of her ascendant stance and ash-blonde hair. “I suspect you’re the Evil Stepmother, is that right?”

Poe, you see, being a prince, had read a few stories himself.

Phasma smiled.

“If you’ve come looking for Phineas, I’m afraid he isn’t here.” She placed a hand on her hip. “I’ve sent him away to seek his fortune in the world, as befitting of his status as my youngest son.”

“That rule,” Poe stated, clearly, “only applies to children who are one’s own blood. And if you’ve sent him away, then that means you must’ve given him some sort of magical item to haul along. You’ll have to tell me what it was before I can think about believing you.”

“You are hardly in a position to be making such demands, your majesty,” Phasma said. “You’re not a proper prince, I’m sure you’ve realized – you are heir to a sovereign state, governed by a constitutional monarchy, and your kingship will be hardly more than a figurehead’s title when it passes to you. All this fairy tale business is not a true part of your heritage.”

She stared down her nose at him. She wore a dress of black moiré, with sleeves lined in white lace, while a necklace of moonstones and onyx glittered at her throat. The skin there was pale and smooth and shone like beaten silver.

(So long as we are splitting semantic hairs, I ought to remind you that we should call her a Wicked Stepmother and not a simply evil one. The former are more dangerous, and more powerful, and more desperate, because of what they stand to lose. Remember those red-hot iron dancing shoes.)

“I won’t refute that,” Poe answered, circling around the kitchen table, “but you should also consider who my parents are – a foundling princess and an orphaned thief who fell in love on a quest together. That’s – ” he raised his fingers, “what would you say, three plotlines? Four, coming together? I might even have a more integral place in this than you do.”

“Oh, my, some storyteller has taught you well.” Phasma reached for a wooden bowl, lifting out a garnet-red apple. “Hungry?”

“And that would be poison, most likely.” Poe raised an eyebrow. “Life-in-death sleep,  glass coffin, that whole gambit. You’ll need a few more dwarves for the spell to work correctly.”

Hux – decidedly not a dwarf – had sauntered back down the stairs by then, auburn hair combed back, smelling overwhelmingly of cloves and aged ambergris. Kylo Ren the Far-Too-Serious followed stiffly after him, silent as requested.

(Privately, those two always felt as though they had been born into the wrong genre. A chivalric romance might have suited them better, something with errant knights and allegorical caves of despair, or else a classical tragedy with generals who are always prepared to carry an ideology to its ultimate conclusion.

Or a celestial opera told in nine movements, possibly. That would have been interesting.)

Phasma took a relishing bite from the apple, but her smile never slipped.

“Very good, your majesty.”

And while our Wicked Stepmother and our Prince Charming moved from the _confirmatio_ to the _refutatio_ stage in their debate, Finn was working his knife to fit inside the trapdoor’s hinge-screws. He could have pounded away at the lock itself all he wanted, or waited for some form of assistance, and had he been anybody else he might have done just that, but youngest sons are often as clever as they are good and patient.

Finn twirled the screws free in several turns – magic doesn’t solve everything – to lift away the imprisoning iron lock that bore his mark, and let the trapdoor clatter noisily away. Why shouldn’t they hear him, either? Then down the ladder, down the hall, down the stairs he went, on nearly-weightless feet, and when he entered the kitchen he saw his prince still standing there and waiting for him.

He walked straight between his stepbrothers, past Phasma, pointing to the mask.

“I’ll take that back now, your majesty,” he said. “Thank you for coming all this way to return it.”

“Well, it wasn’t entirely selfless of me.” Poe smiled broadly. “I think everyone might be getting that royal holiday, soon, so long as you’re interested.”

(That was another thing about being a prince, such terribly earnest and plainly terrible lines. It was a fortunate thing he was so handsome, for Finn and for you alike.)

Finn took the white mask as Poe offered it, carefully and with his fingertips, staring at its smooth-curved insides and the crimson stain and the crack running down its front.

But did he need to put it on, do you suppose, our final act of promised transformation, in order that the prince might know him for who he truly was? No, no, I don’t believe so either. He had no more need of it, you see.

(Rey had allowed that one minor snarl in the enchantment, letting the mask stay behind when everything else vanished, because she also happened to have an excellent taste for imperfection – she would need to collect it eventually, of course, but at the moment she was set to attend the christening of some narcopletic newborn princess. She had not followed the etiquette of _répondez s'il vous plait_ and thus needed to be there early.)

So instead Finn slipped the mask into his own belt, smiling in return, and reached out to accept that hand the prince was holding out for him. They had not gotten beyond the door together when Phasma spoke.

“And have you anything to say?” she prompted, shoulders still set proudly straight. “I’m sure some thanks are in order, Phineas.”

“No.” Finn turned. “And the name is Finn, now. I don’t owe you anything.”

“Of course you do, darling. I’ve made you what you are.” And incredibly, our Hero thought he saw his Wicked Stepmother wink at him. “I’m the plot, you know.”

He peered into the darkened room behind her.

There was the kitchen table, and the hearth, and the narrow stairs, and somewhere there was an unlit forge with a hammer rested atop its anvil, and of course there were his stepmother and stepbrothers waiting in silence. He could have them punished, Finn realized, according to the laws of story if not the laws of the land.

But here he stood, outside, and that was enough.

“Thank you, then,” he said.

He walked away without looking back.

Finn was not quite so well-versed in fairy tales as you are, I should mention, having only just realized his role in them, and he had never been told how kisses are not strictly required unless to end hundred-year-slumbers or unnatural cases of amphibianism – therefore it was more of a pleasant surprise than an indignant one when Poe stopped abruptly at the gate, turned to face him, and caught him hard by the collar and mouth at once. Finn’s eyes crossed slightly before he could remember to close them, which he did.

The kiss lasted a long while, out in that hay-chaff summer sunlight while the birds – who, like magic, can never hold more than a single thought in their minds at one time, and had finally gotten the spectacle they came for – all took wing.

When it ended Finn leaned forward in kind, intent on returning the gesture.

“Not yet,” Poe said, and he laughed. “Keep it. It suits you.”

Then they lived happily at some times, unhappily at others, and very many things in between, which is really the honest best that you or I or anyone else can do. And whether the tale has properly ended now or not – as I said at the very start, people are often unaware of the story they are telling because they are still somewhere in the middle of it – must be for you yourself to determine.

…


End file.
